"That is happiness; to be disolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep." - Willa Cather

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Monday, 5 March 2012

The green balls told me to start dividing by three

And I almost added an exclamation point to the title. Because as we all know, all good ultra runners get so! excited!! and enthusiastic!! about everything!

So I may finally be paying the price for all of my reckless, wanton behavior (I am referring to weight loss and lots of training, of course).

I am injured and my left breast has stopped producing milk.

Or are these the results of training and weight loss?

As you may have noticed (at least Piccola Pinecone noticed and emailed me to see how I did!), I was supposed to run a 5k yesterday. But on Wednesday night, during yogalates of all things, I injured the extensor tendons on the top of my left foot. I repeatedly did a very vigorous cobra that involved my legs not touching the ground - anyone know what I am talking about? And noticed a little pain at the time, but the next morning I could hardly walk! SR said "typical overuse injury!" But I'm not sure. This is the second time I have come home from yogalates injured, though, so I probably should just drop the whole thing. It is just my good friend, Tammy, teaches the class and I really like it while I am not in pain!

SR, on the otherhand, ran the polar dash. Here he is lining up. (Yeah, I'm guessing you can pick him out)

Who do you think his major competition was? Turns out it was a girl you can't see in the picture; the same 15 year old girl, Bailey, I beat by 3 seconds in our last 5k! The course ended up being long by an amount that I don't know. SR had planned to run under 16 minutes and he ran in 16:40. He said one of the "miles" took about 40 seconds longer to run than he had anticipated, but he wasn' t wearing a garmin and neither was Bailey who ran in 20:20 (this is interesting to me since I think it means I would run about a 19:40 5k on a normal day on a course of an actual 5k length. But will that ever happen?)

I have been forced into a mega taper before 3 days of Syllamo this coming weekend due to my foot, which actually doesn't hurt anymore, but no point taking chances. I have been swimming and biking a lot and loving it. I had actually gotten a bit sick of running. My swimming has improved significantly over the past couple of months, but I don't think too many people who read this blog swim. If anyone is interested in details, just let me know. Who really wants advice from me anyway, though?

I had also forgotten what good stress relievers reading and playing music are. I just finished "An Unquiet Mind" by Kay Redfield Jamison. Almost a finish-in-one-sitting quality of a novel, but newborns just don't allow that much uninterrupted reading to ever take place. It was a captivating autobiography of a woman with manic depressive disorder who is an expert on the disease and lecturer on it at Johns Hopkins. Great read. Now I'm onto Da Vinci's Ghost. I was supposed to start reading "Still Alice" for my book club, but the subt

itle "A book about Alzheimers you will never forget" just makes me laugh too much to even open it.

Okay, okay, so these stress relievers are nice and all --- but NOTHING beats running and I can't wait for three days of running in the Ozarks.

Now -- what about the failure of my left breast? So I started making conversation with this woman at the YMCA the other day and then she said "Oh, you're the one who breast feeds in the lobby - and I always think to myself - how can a woman who is as thin as you possibly produce breast milk". Ha. I love blunt honesty. Well, that's evolution, baby! I could have responded, but didn't.

The truth is, I feel healthy and am surprised my boob gave up at this moment. I actually don't weigh myself that often since I don't want to be "falsely reassured" by a low weight and honestly go more on feeling and the distance (if any) between my legs. And I feel just perfect right now. I weighed myself today, though, and I guess the BMI is 17.8. Not that far off from average female olympic marathoner finalists and perhaps just right for me.

Thank you Dr. Khosla for this 1985 study (mutiply BMI's by 10 to get what we now consider BMI)

Also have to point out that I am married to a guy who weighs himself 10x more than I do - and he looks damn good on a treadmill, even when he has to roll up his pants because he forgot his shorts.

This picture was taken entirely without permission and was unethical. A few animals were harmed.

I would also like to mention that I was paid a visit by Alicia Hudelson twice last week and I have found a partner for the Trans Alpine 2013! And so has SR - Alicia's fiancé.

And here is El Guapo with our friends' son, Griffin. They are one day apart in age, light years apart in hair abundance - and that matching cumfy, wumfy northwoods fleece is entirely coincidental! Oh, yeah, this is our house in the picture. And that guy on the left is my husband.

12 comments:

I left a running song comment on the last post that got eaten - now I forget what it was.

When Alicia said she was going to Denmark and looking for people to run with, I knew who that would lead to. Good luck at Syllamo!!!![smirk]!

I've injured my extensor tendons multiple times, sometimes just from tying my shoes differently; if it happens each time after that class whose name is to embarassing to type, then you know what's causing it. I used to have knee problems every time I did one yoga pose; incorrect form led to twisting at the knee joint.

i am going to recycle the advice you gave me when my left boob gave out on me. first, if your right boob is stil producing than it is probably not a body weight issue... why would your left boob be mroe sensitive to your right boob to bmi? put el guapo on the left boob as often as you put him on the right. even if he initially gets nothing. i find with slack/overachiever boob syndrome it is positively reinforced by the mom who wants to drain the overachiever who is producing more and ignores the slacker who does not need draining. make sure baby suckles on both and lefty will come around. may take some patience. this was your advice to me about 2 years ago. my lefty never achieved levels of production that righty did but production did come up somewhat after i started using lefty more.oh and make sure you're drinking enough (sry almost too obvious to mention)

Yeah, Danni, this reference was kind of impossibly tough. It was something a schizophrenic patient once told the author of "An Unquiet Mind" (the book I wrote about in the post) and when I read it, I was just so amazed at the wildness of the human mind at times.

Ana-Maria, do you remember that part of An Unquiet Mind? Gosh, I tried to read "Still Alice" tonight (after I read your comment) and I find the author's style of writing extremely irritating. I can't read it. This book club is a no go for me.

Hello from Rude Skov

Photo by Stine Sophie Winckel

...

My name is Tracy. I am a physician scientist from the USA, living with my husband and two young boys in Denmark. I work as a post-doc fellow at Næstved Hospital. I have a scientific interest in vision loss, vision loss during exercise, exercise, running during pregnancy, MAF training as well as nutrition and health for athletes. I also have a love for music, physics, statistics, cycling, yoga, cross-country skiing, bla bla bal.

I was a member of Team USA at the IAU World Championships in Ultra Trail Running in 2013 in Wales. I am now training to run with Team Denmark at the IAU World Championships in Annency, France in May 2015.